The shipment of various types of cargo in unitized containers over the road and aboard ship has become conventional within the past fifteen years. The individual containers that are mounted on a wheeled chassis for land transportation are demountable from the wheeled chassis for storage and shipment in stacked relationship onboard ship to a final destination. Individual refrigerator units having sufficient capacity to maintain the temperature level in an individual container is also well known and has been used widely to refrigerate perishable products such as produce, meats and other products.
There has been developed a substantial market in various countries for the trans-shipment for meat products in carcass form. The utilization of a cargo container has been found suitable for shipping meat carcasses in a refrigerated unit. However, the fixtures and hardware necessary to equip a cargo container fully with a permanent installation requires that the installation be costly and the individual container may be returned after shipment of a load of meat carcasses empty on the return trip thereby requiring an increased cost of the initial shipment or requiring the shipper to absorb the cost of the empty return for the cargo container.
Present invention is directed to a demountable or knock-down portable meat railer for supporting meat carcasses in a containerized housing for storage and shipment in one direction with a full load of carcasses supported in the refrigerated containerized unit and after delivery, the demountable portable meat railer may be readily and easily disassembled, stacked and stored in a minimum space enabling an entirely different cargo to be loaded in the containerized unit for the return trip thereby reducing cost of the shipped cargo.
It is an objective of this invention to provide a knockdown portable meat railer for use in combination with a containerized shipping unit which may be readily erected by unskilled labor, loaded with meat carcasses, shipped to any destination in a refrigerated unit, and the meat railer disassembled by unskilled labor, stacked and stored when a different cargo load may be shipped in the same containerized unit.
Another objective of this invention is the provision of a knock-down or demountable portable meat railer in which a series of inverted U-shaped sections, each of which is readily disassembled, and a series of carcass supporting rails are assembled to form a meat railer within a containerized unit for shipment of a cargo of meat carcasses in a refrigerated cargo container between distant locations and the meat railer may be readily disassembled within the containerized unit for accommodating other cargo.
Still another objective of this invention is the provision of a knock-down and portable meat railer for a cargo container that will support meat carcasses in a refrigerated atmosphere and in which the meat railer may be readily disassembled for thorough cleansing and reinstallation after the containerized unit is thoroughly cleaned to meet appropriate governmental standards.
Other objectives and many of the attendant advantages of this invention will become more readily apparent to those skilled in the transportation of meat products from a detailed description of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawing in which like characters of reference designate corresponding parts throughout the several views.